We told the truck driver not to drive too fast on the way back. "Polé-polé" (swahili for slowly-slowly).
He might not have been the most pleasant person, but he did know how to drive his truck. At a slow tempo he towed us all the way into Dibaya-Lubwe and dropped us off at the catholic mission. We used our kinetic strap for the tow, that reduces the jacking about when he takes off. It was a scary ride at moments. Driving a few meters behind a truck, with no brakes.
It was close to midnight when arrived at the mission, but there was still a lot of action going on. We obviously drew a crowd. But at the same time the weekly bushtaxi to Kikwit was about the leave. It's a regular Toyota Landcruiser, like ours, who does this run - loaded to the brim. The only person we 'knew' here - the father of the mission - was about to leave with this taxi.
Then the discussion about the money started. The drivers of the truck were still very vague about how much we owned them. They eventually told their price: 650$US !!
At first I thought I misunderstood them, after all their French was not that good and mine is far from perfect too. But no, they really meant 650$US. This made me angry, very angry.
We had to make a split second decision here. If we hestiated too long, they would think we were considering the amount and talking the price down would become very difficult. If we pissed them off too much we were making ourselves very vulnerable. We very well knew we had nowhere to go and we would be needing the help of the people here to get us going again.
0.1 seconds later I started shouting in a very African way. Gesticulating with my arms. Clearly indicated that their price was completely ridiculous (it was!) and we would never pay this.
A heated discussion started. This drew an even bigger crowd. It was pitch dark and we were in a city we did not know. Several hundred people were around us and some of them were getting quite upset. They saw an opportunity to earn a lot of cash. We could not give in to it now, it would make our situation impossible if we ever wanted to get our car repaired here. Josephine would later tell me that this was a very scary situation. I was too much in an adrenaline rush to even notice at the time.
The father - clearly very annoyed as he wanted to leave - eventually came to negotiate before things got out of hand. We had calculated that the the truck used 50$US in fuel. We offered to pay 75$US, still way too much. The driver was very dissapointed, he probably had visions of what he'd be able to buy with 650$! It took the father an hour to talk the price down to 100$. We agreed.
We saw the father off and thanked him for his help. He gave us permission to camp in the - unfenced - garden of the mission. There was a small workshop at the mission. The only one in town apparently. We could make use of that to get our car fixed.
Still with a big crowd around us we set up our tent and tried to go to sleep.
It was a miracle that we were able to get our car towed to the mission in one day. We were glad we could sleep in our own tent that night and that we did not had to leave our car in the jungle overnight. Getting our car going again would be another story. We might be stuck here for a while.
We did not make any friends in Dibaya-Lubwe today.
